From viral Facebook posts encouraging users to post a sort of declaration of independence (completely meaningless, but consider the intention) to a joint letter by eight congressmen asking Google to clarify its own privacy policy, awareness that the small print really matters is on the rise.

What’s more interesting is why this awareness is so much stronger online than it is in the physical world, where fine print on everything from a credit card application to the packaging of a new iPhone runs to dozens of pages of dense, virtually unreadable legalese, often reserving the company expansive rights while limiting those of the customer. Over at Mouseprint.org, you can see plenty of egregious examples — none of which attract a fraction of the outrage reserved for the dotcoms.

Why is that? One one level, people expect a raw deal from the businesses of the physical world. Nobody goes to the bank for a hug, or looks to car dealers for meaning and empowerment. But the internet industry, despite minting plenty of billionaires, still lays claim to a higher moral purpose — a sort of aww-shucks-we’re-just-kids-making-something-cool kind of innocence. Public expectations of dotcoms have yet to catch up to their reality as investor-driven corporations.